The digital home is now becoming more complex with the myriad of new and emerging digital devices intended to address many user and consumer needs such as communication, entertainment, privacy, and security, etc. However, given the complexity of the emerging digital home and digital environments generally, users who are technologically challenged may find it a daunting and intimidating task to manage their home networks and interconnected digital devices. Moreover, new paradigms are emerging oriented to delivering media content to and the consuming of media content at the home. The protection of received Internet-sourced media content in additional to user-generated media content is additionally an important aspect that may be inadequately addressed by the technologically challenged user. Furthermore, with respect to Internet based data while most of the content delivery solutions are provided to the digital home networks through availability of the “two-foot” interface (i.e., the PC), it is relatively cumbersome to bring this content to the “ten-foot” interface (e.g., the television).
In addition to hardware limitations, there is a lack of meaningful direction and “coaching” leveraging new information technology that are now becoming available for use in the home or small enterprise, thereby limiting the ability of the user to improve their lives, make the “right” decisions, or meet domain-specific objectives such as smarter nutrition, meeting exercise targets, medication regimen conformance, disciplined financial actions, etc., with the explosion of connected devices, personal and home sensors, and access to user and family data provides improved self-visibility of behavior and performance to the user. Existing solutions and services (home automation, energy management, media services, exercise, e-health solutions, financial management program, presence programs, etc.) are “siloed”, not integrated, with other aspects of the user's life, don't fully leverage the influence of social media friends, don't enable users to develop personalized objectives, and don't provide expert-level coaching. At the same time, users are exposed to advertising and offers/incentives that may or may not be relevant to the moment, and may not be complementary to the users' overarching objectives, and may compromise a users' private and confidential information.
What is needed are solutions for providing managed services for supporting and managing the emerging digital home including providing a gateway appliance that can offer managed services to its users to include incorporation of a causation and correlation engine abilities that enable broader services for users.